When I read the Prodigal Son story
I do my best to find my own story
empathizing with both brothers
as victims of injustices
learned through self and other punishment
and economically dominant political control
by others,
heavily investing in self-victimizing images.

Then I try to see how this all feels
for their restorative justice and peace-invested patriarch,
advocating for healing motivational causes
and hurtful family-divesting behaviors.

Then I wonder
if I would prefer that Father
to a birthright to own me father
who believes it is his totalitarian sacred vocation
to control my soul’s polypathic directions
and my other sensory erections
and affections
and dis-affections for victimizing victimless-criminals

Which is, by accessible logic
and ecologic,
an oxymoron worthy of evaporation
like degenerative military-intelligence
and like gun-control,

As if the entire pathological point
of investing in hate- and fear-mongering
is something other than to control your situation,
which can only be sufficiently protected by owning
and transporting,
selling and buying and competitively trading,
and seriously investing in guns
as if the U.S. Constitution has nothing else to say
about healthy self-defense,
and growing well-being,
and unity,

Preferably through automated military-grade weapons
for arming your home-militarization school
of and for further ToughLove competitions
in Win-Lose (0)-Sum HardKnocks
especially for unredeemably hopeless criminals
who obviously don’t know Jesus,
much less an omnipresent regenerative Gaia Goddess
of ReStorative Justice and Matriotic Cosmological Peace.

Because you missed that half-day in school,
while out behind the woodshed,
bullied for cranky behavior
or deviant imagination
or verbal risk-taking
rather than being invited
to embrace MotherEarth’s natural-spiritual experiences
and co-investments
in Win-Win Golden Rules,
like water your wilting flowers
and not your exponentially prodigal weeds.

Or perhaps a bilateral Tipping Point resolution
reweaves
hidden in bicameral co-tensions,
intentions,
problems,
issues,
noticing basic ego-eco co-presence,
breathing in and up Yang,
out and down Yin speeds of bilateral restoration flow,
co-acclimating light
from Here’s phylogenic-interdependent fullness
through Now’s hologynic-emptiness…

Actually,
I usually get stuck on empathizing with the Prodigal Son
as victimized and enslaved through retributive punishments
for his victimless crimes,
other than against his own ego-health,
which isn’t wise
but not exactly cause to create a victim either.

I seldom move on to how grateful I would hope to be
to have back my brother who rejected us
back when he might have been more fun
to hang out with.

As for the ReStorative Justice Advocate
and Green CoOperative Farmer Father
for 7-Generations of Tribal Peace,
that co-empathic thought experiment
is way past my pay grade.